Redox has announced it is extending the capabilities of Salesforce Health Cloud with its EMR integration engine.

Redox provides a modern API solution for clinical integration with electronic medical record (EMR) systems. The addition of Redox to the Health Cloud product provides streamlined sharing of clinical data and a comprehensive view of patient conditions and clinical events. Health Cloud is generally available for purchase today, giving healthcare providers new ways to make smarter care decisions, engage with patients across their caregiver networks and manage patient data. Redox joins Salesforce as a Health Cloud launch partner at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS16) Conference in Las Vegas.

“We are devoted to accelerating the adoption of great technology in healthcare. We believe Salesforce Health Cloud represents a great step for the industry and look forward to helping the solution positively impact the maximum number of lives,” said Niko Skievaski, Co-founder & President, Redox. “Health Cloud brings together data from many sources and presents a comprehensive view of the patient. Accessing data from the electronic medical record real-time through a modern infrastructure is an integral piece of this puzzle and we are proud to partner with Salesforce to deliver robust EMR integrations.”

“We live in the age of the customer, and patients now expect personalized and engaging experiences with their healthcare providers,” said Joshua Newman, MD, Chief Medical Officer, GM, Salesforce Healthcare and Life Sciences. “Health Cloud is all about building stronger patient relationships, and Redox is a valuable part of our journey towards creating a modern healthcare platform for patients, doctors, and everyone else involved in care.”

Redox Key Features

Redox integrates with electronic medical records and standardizes disparate data formats to consistent JSON data models. Partners establish connectivity with Redox once and are then able to send and receive data with any health system or digital health application through a modern web service API. Redox provides robust maintenance and support of connections ensuring data flows appropriately and allows organizations to focus on core functions.

For the healthcare industry, this new product represents an opportunity to preserve often-expensive or even irreplaceable products like pharmaceuticals, vaccines, or human organs and tissues requiring a constant temperature for storage.

By monitoring the AC power current, PowerPath Temp from Emanate Wireless can detect laboring compressors and notify maintenance personnel before refrigeration fails. Notification is accomplished via a browser-based dashboard or mobile application. In this manner, the devices from Emanate Wireless are capable of saving thousands of dollars — or of saving lives.

"Imagine having to explain to an organ or tissue recipient that a donated product has spoiled," said Diener. "Now imagine never having to. That's the difference this new product will make for some people. We couldn't be more proud to bring it to market, and I couldn't be more proud of our engineering team for creating it."

PowerPath is easily installed without any particular, mechanical expertise. It mounts on the side of a healthcare or pharmaceutical refrigerator or freezer and gets plugged-in between the refrigerator or freezer's plug and an AC outlet. Its temperature probe gets inserted from the back of the refrigerator or freezer's plug or behind the door seal.

In addition to temperature and AC power status, PowerPath Temp can monitor other conditions, such as whether a door has been left ajar — another condition that can lead to ruin for healthcare providers. The device includes a rechargeable, lifetime battery and Wi-Fi technology. It also features low-energy Bluetooth technology to communicate to the PowerPath mobile application.

Asheville, N.C.-based Mission will integrate PeraHealth’s suite of clinical surveillance solutions into its existing enterprise data warehouse and its Cerner electronic medical record (EMR) system, helping care teams visualize a full picture of patient condition. The software will also be used at the 763-bed Mission Hospital to remotely monitor patients and support bed management across the health system’s five other hospitals located throughout western North Carolina.

“Our partnership with PeraHealth further demonstrates our commitment to providing fully integrated patient care that improves the health of the people and communities we serve,” said Ronald A. Paulus, M.D., president and CEO at Mission, the only health system in the nation named to Truven Health Analytics’ Top 15 Health Systems list four years in a row (2012-2015).

Powered by the Rothman Index, a disease-agnostic measure of patient condition used to predict patient readmission and mortality risk, PeraHealth software pulls data from all major EMR systems. The data is automatically translated into an Index score that’s presented in color-coded graphs computed upon admission and trended across the entire episode of care. The Rothman Index is validated by 18 peer-reviewed publications, including a recent article detailing how its use by a nurse rapid response team was linked to a 30 percent mortality reduction.

“Providing clinicians with innovative, analytics-driven resources to help deliver the right care, in the right place, at the right time is essential in today’s healthcare environment,” said Dr. Chris DeRienzo, Chief Patient Safety Officer at Mission Health. “We believe our partnership with PeraHealth will enhance communication among caregivers, especially during care transitions, and deliver new methods of reducing preventable harm to our patients through machine learning and predictive analytics.”

Patients frequently exhibit subtle warning signs in the hours and days before experiencing life-threatening health problems. Considering the average five-day hospital stay includes at least 24 patient handoffs, these signs can easily be missed during department transfers and shift changes, increasing the potential for unnecessary patient harm and costs.

“Detecting potential patient deterioration is extremely challenging for any care team,” said PeraHealth CEO Stephanie Alexander. “By clearly trending a full picture of patient condition in real-time, PeraHealth solutions alert clinicians earlier to subtle health issues, which can increase the likelihood of successful intervention. We are honored to partner with Mission Health to support their use of innovative analytics to provide high value patient care.”

UPMC is partnering with Vivify Health as a customer of and investor in its mobile population health solutions to remotely care for patients.

Vivify Health's technology is used by the nation's largest health organizations, representing more than 500 hospitals and payers, to efficiently manage, monitor and engage patient populations of all sizes and risk levels. Founded in 2009, Vivify was the first company to offer a Cloud-based solution for mobile population health and chronic care management using any consumer mobile device.

"After an extensive evaluation of a number of companies, Vivify Health clearly stood out to us as the one best aligned to deliver patient-centered remote care across UPMC's integrated payer/provider system," said Tal Heppenstall, President of UPMC Enterprises, the commercialization arm of UPMC which led the Vivify investment. "As we deliver care under an increasingly risk-based reimbursement model, we are excited to become a customer, development partner and investor in Vivify's scalable population health management technology. Backing this kind of innovation to solve critical healthcare problems is at the heart of our mission at UPMC Enterprises."

Uniquely positioned for true population health management

Vivify Health solutions enable insurance and provider organizations to conduct virtual care visits, communicate seamlessly with patients and members, and remotely monitor any patient population, such as those with chronic illnesses. The solutions are tailored to patients of all levels of technology expertise, from an "instant-on" health kit for consumers with limited or no technology experience, to a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) solution for those who prefer to use their own devices, such as smartphones and tablets.

"Vivify's remote monitoring and communication technology is essential to making patients true partners in their care and providing the right services when and where they need them, increasingly at home," said Andrew Watson, MD, UPMC's Medical Director of Telemedicine and Vice President of UPMC International. "As an integrated healthcare delivery and financing system, we are focused on keeping patients well and out of the hospital, and that can happen only with affordable, easy-to-use technology like Vivify's."

Such flexibility to conform to the consumer's unique needs and comfort level has contributed to outcomes that Vivify reports with other customers, such as reducing readmissions by 65 percent, improving return on investment by 144 percent and achieving patient compliance and satisfaction rates well over 95 percent.

UPMC joins growing roster of customer investors

Vivify Health's other investors include several of the nation's largest health systems and health plans, including over 700 hospitals represented by Heritage Group and Ascension Ventures, followed by LabCorp and Envision Health.

As day-to-day users, customer-investors like UPMC take an active role in the continued development of the Vivify Health platform and the company's strategic direction. To that end, Brenton Burns, Executive Vice President of UPMC Enterprises, will join the Vivify Health board of directors. Enterprises' experienced product development team in Pittsburgh will also work with Vivify to enhance its solutions and to deploy them effectively across UPMC's vast system which covers virtually every aspect of care, including not only hospitals and physician offices but rehabilitation and senior living facilities.

"We are honored to partner with UPMC, one of the nation's most prestigious health systems, to advance its mission to provide outstanding patient care and shape tomorrow's healthcare with innovative population health technology," said Eric Rock, Vivify Health CEO. "We look forward to helping UPMC achieve unprecedented outcomes for its patients as part of its commitment to patient-centered, affordable care."

Today, National Decision Support Company (NDSC) announced CareSelect, a new enterprise-wide appropriate use criteria (AUC) and clinical pathway delivery engine integrated with electronic medical records (EMR).

"With over 2 million monthly transactions being generated by more than 100 health systems using our flagship solution ACR Select, we have rapidly become the market's choice to enable the delivery of EMR integrated imaging appropriate use criteria (AUC)," saidMichael Mardini, CEO, NDSC. "Through this experience we have also earned the trust of EMR vendors and guideline publishers alike, and due to the rich interoperability we've achieved with our EMR partners we have expanded into new clinical areas through CareSelect."

CareSelect is designed to house and manage both national and local guidelines and enable healthcare organizations to directly manage the delivery and configuration of EMR advisories using the most up to date clinical knowledge—all within the native EMR user interface.

Guidelines are constantly changing and providers are struggling to manage the delivery of all this new medical knowledge to healthcare providers in a meaningful way. Compliance and quality are critical success factors in a value driven healthcare environment and CareSelect enables the delivery of a wide range of medical knowledge to healthcare providers without the need to reconfigure the EMR each time a guideline changes or needs to be added.

Through the company's work with the American College of Radiology and numerous other imaging criteria sources, NDSC has proven its competence in distilling medical knowledge into actionable criteria. "With CareSelect, we are now applying natural language processing and sophisticated algorithms to the EMR data, enabling high impact advisories across the care continuum," said Mardini. "These new capabilities also extend the sophistication of the imaging guidelines we can deliver with ACR Select, to include automated indication calculation, and to cover more complex clinical scenarios."

Through CareSelect, the company is delivering high impact clinical advisories covering a range of medical conditions across the care continuum, such as those from Choosing Wisely, an initiative of the ABIM and theNNT.com that cover a range of care settings and conditions, including anti-biotic stewardship, high cost lab testing and utilization management in the Emergency Department.

NDSC is currently deploying CareSelect at select healthcare organizations and will demonstrate its latest developments, including integrations with leading EHRs, at HIMSS 2016, booth #11010, March 1-3, 2016, Las Vegas, NV.

Royal Philips announced four leading U.S. health systems have signed multi-year telehealth agreements with Philips to implement its remote intensive care unit (eICU) program.

These new population health management engagements include agreements with Westchester Medical Center Health Network in New York, Baptist Memorial Health Care in Tennessee and BJC HealthCare in Missouri and will further extend Philips’ eICU reach by hundreds of beds and thousands of ICU cases each year. Over the past 15 years, the program has been implemented in more than 50 health systems and 500 hospitals in the U.S. to deliver care throughout 3.5 million ICU patient stays [1].

“As health systems seek to improve patient outcomes while lowering costs, healthcare leaders often first look at the ICU since it can account for 50 percent of mortality and a third of hospital costs,” said Derek Smith, General Manager, Hospital to Home at Philips. “The level of care required by these patients demands continuous monitoring. The explosive growth of telehealth in recent years proves the need for these unique delivery models that provide the best care, while addressing the demand to reduce costs.”

The conditions of ICU patients can deteriorate rapidly. The eICU program’s telehealth team of remote specialists continuously monitor patients to support the bedside team and proactively identify issues and intervene before they become significant problems. The eICU telehealth team has access to Philips advanced analytics that can process large amounts of data from more than 150 patients, along with data visualization tools that allow clinicians to focus on those patients who need their attention first.

“Ensuring the best care possible for patients takes on a new meaning when their condition is critical,” said Corey Scurlock, M.D., Medical Director for the Westchester Medical Center Health Network’s eHealth Center. “While our on-site staff is exceptionally capable, the additional support that a specialized telehealth program like Philips offers empowers us to oversee a larger population and have a deeper insight into those at the greatest risk of needing intervention immediately.”

Ultimately, this type of proactive care can help improve clinical and financial outcomes. Compared to patients receiving usual ICU care, patients who received ICU care from a hospital with an eICU program were 26% more likely to survive and discharged from the ICU 20% faster [2]. Additionally, on average, tele-ICUs result in USD 5,000 in cost savings per patient [3], and USD 1.2 million in savings due to reduced transfers [4].

As the population in the U.S. ages, demand for critical care is rising at a time when the industry is facing a chronic shortage of intensivists. According to The Journal of the American Medical Association, the intensivist shortage will become increasingly challenging, with supply meeting only 22 percent of the demand for services by 2020 [5]. Consequently, ICU patients are often cared for by non-specialists.

Telehealth enables intensivists to cover wider geographies and provide access to care to more people, while patients stay in their local hospitals. This helps them avoid both transportation costs and the stress of transferring to other critical care centers, while still giving them access to the specialized care they need.

The Philips eICU program is part of a suite of enterprise telehealth solutions delivered by Philips Hospital to Home to help improve outcomes, provide better value and expand access to care. Programs help address multiple cohorts within a population ranging from highest cost patients with intensive ambulatory care and acute needs, to discharge transition and chronic patient management, to prevention and wellness for the general population. These programs use a proactive care model to clinically transform the delivery of care to address growing clinician shortages while improving patient outcomes.

Philips enters new agreement on patient monitoring systems and software with the Stockholm County Council

Royal Philips announced that it has signed a new agreement with the Stockholm County Council on patient monitoring systems and software for the Karolinska University Hospital, which comprises the New Karolinska Solna University Hospital and the Karolinska University Hospital Huddinge.

As part of the agreement, Philips will deliver patient monitoring systems and clinical decision support applications that can be used to monitor a patient’s vital signs including the respiratory rate, pulse, blood pressure and temperature.

“The deterioration of a patient’s condition is often preceded by physiological changes that can be detected up to 24 hours before a serious event,” said Håkan Skytt, Customer Manager at Philips Sweden. “Changes in a patient’s vital signs are frequently an indication that the patient’s condition is worsening and that there is an increased risk of complications. Constant monitoring of the vital signs will allow any subtle changes to be detected and addressed in a timely manner.”

The new agreement further includes an innovation collaboration to jointly develop next-generation solutions for patient-centric care.

“For Philips, strategic partnerships with leading healthcare providers such as Karolinka University Hospital are an important and effective way to create innovative health technologies that can both streamline and enhance the delivery of care,” said Johan Folkunger, General Manager of Philips’ Health Systems businesses in Sweden.

Philips’ patient monitoring systems can measure and collect a patient’s vital signs and allow remote monitoring from a central workstation as well as bedside monitoring at an individual patient’s bedside. The data can be readily accessed and used by the relevant staff for the adequate delivery of care.

The collected data is stored centrally at the Karolinska University Hospital and can be used for the delivery of care, quality enhancement and clinical research. The New Karolinska Solna University Hospital is currently being constructed and will be admitting the first patients in the fourth quarter of 2016. The majority of the construction work is expected to be finalized in the course of 2017 and the hospital is planned to be fully operational in 2018. Karolinska University Hospital is one of the world’s leading academic hospitals, and its new site will reinforce its position in the field of highly specialized medical care.

The New Karolinska Solna University Hospital will implement a patient-centric approach to healthcare and deploy care pathways in which patient care, clinical research and training have been integrated. This is fully in line with Philips’ mission to develop meaningful innovations that make a difference for consumers, patients and healthcare providers.

TriZetto announced the general availability of an integrated technology solution and advisory service that automates and accelerates ongoing configuration and migration tasks for healthcare payer customers of the company’s QNXT TM core administration system. Some 70 health plans use TriZetto’s QNXT system to administer the benefits of approximately 20 million Americans.

The new QNXT Configuration Solution enhances the ability to configure the QNXT platform for new lines of business, new plan designs, and federal and state mandates. Over the past few months, TriZetto has worked with the Hawaii Medical Service Association (HMSA) to jointly develop the QNXT Configuration Solution.

An independent licensee of the BlueCross and BlueShield Association, HMSA covers more than half of Hawaii’s population and is a longstanding QNXT customer.

“We anticipate TriZetto’s QNXT Configuration Solution will automate workflow and simplify configuration build processes that are manual today. With this solution, we will greatly reduce keying in configuration data as well as the data-entry errors that can happen as a result,” said HMSA senior manager Marsha Magnussen.

“Certainly, health plans choose TriZetto’s QNXT system because it’s a single-system solution that streamlines enrollment, premium billing, claims processing, customer service and other administrative functions,” said Tom Kearns, senior vice president of consulting services at TriZetto. “But they also choose this platform because it offers flexibility and scales to address changing business requirements. The QNXT Configuration Solution helps ensure that our customers can scale fast, frequently and with fewer manual touches.”

With the Affordable Care Act (ACA), HMSA had to modify hundreds of plans to meet federal requirements for preventive screenings and other medical services. The payer also had to stand up more than 30 ACA-compliant gold, silver and bronze plan options for Hawaii’s state benefits Exchange. TriZetto’s new configuration solution should enable HMSA and other healthcare payers to modify current benefit plans and launch new plan designs in hours instead of days, and days instead of weeks.

“We expect TriZetto’s QNXT Configuration Solution to improve our speed-to-market and flexibility, and we need both to efficiently respond to healthcare reform,” said Linda Katagiri, senior vice president for Member Services at HMSA. “The number of reform mandates – today and for the foreseeable future – makes TriZetto’s solution indispensable for HMSA. With the QNXT Configuration Solution, we will be able to deploy full solutions to test environments and test more thoroughly using Claims Test Pro. We can then move those tested solutions to production, ensuring quality, which ultimately leads to happy customers.”

Cognizant (NASDAQ: CTSH), a global leader in information technology, consulting and business process services, today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire TriZetto Corporation for $2.7 billion in cash, subject to customary adjustments. Based in Englewood, CO, privately-held TriZetto is a leading provider of healthcare IT software and solutions.

"Healthcare is undergoing structural shifts due to reform, cost pressure and shifting responsibilities between payers and providers. This creates a significant growth opportunity, which TriZetto will help us capture," said Francisco D'Souza, CEO of Cognizant. "We are excited that the integrated portfolio of capabilities across technology and operations will uniquely position us to help clients drive higher levels of operational efficiency, while re-imagining care for the future. We look forward to welcoming the TriZetto team into the Cognizant family and creating a truly differentiated and sustainable foundation for healthcare."

Cognizant expects this acquisition to accelerate significantly its market position and strategy of delivering innovative healthcare software and solutions to a wide range of healthcare clients. TriZetto and its 3,700 employees will be a part of Cognizant's existing healthcare business, which currently serves more than 200 clients, including 16 of the top 20 U.S. health plans and four of the top five pharmacy benefit management companies. Healthcare currently represents approximately 26 percent of Cognizant's revenue.

"TriZetto solutions enable the healthcare interactions of millions of people in the U.S. every day," said Jude Dieterman, President and COO of TriZetto. "Our agreement with Cognizant advances our vision of simplifying healthcare for everyone. We believe the combination of Cognizant and TriZetto's talented employees and innovative technology and operations will have a meaningful impact on the way health is managed and care is delivered."

"Cognizant and TriZetto have had a long-term relationship, having jointly served a number of healthcare clients to date," said Gordon Coburn, President of Cognizant. "This acquisition is a natural fit for us. It represents a great opportunity to integrate services across our three horizons—traditional IT services; high-growth businesses such as management consulting, business process services and IT infrastructure services; and emerging delivery models—and provide even greater value to our clients."

"The transaction is expected to be immediately accretive to Cognizant's non-GAAP EPS, excluding one-time transaction costs and adjustments," said Karen McLoughlin, CFO of Cognizant. "That earnings benefit is expected to increase over time as we realize significant revenue synergy potential from the combination of these businesses."

Cognizant intends to finance the transaction through a combination of cash on hand and debt, and has secured $1 billion of committed financing in support of the transaction. The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2014. The purchase agreement provides for customary closing conditions and purchase price adjustments including, without limitation, adjustments for items such as cash, indebtedness and working capital.

New solution platform enables apps that make data actionable.

Nucleus Independent Living a Non-Profit Health Service Provider of Community Support Services, serves the communities of Mississauga, Oakville, South Etobicoke, and 2 Supportive Housing sites in Toronto. Funded by Mississauga Local Health Integration Network and the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long Term Care, Nucleus embraces and has adopted the fundamental concepts of the Independent Living philosophy.

Nucleus was seeking a trusted partner to provide technology that would link resources and real-time alerts while delivering care. The technology needed to allow staff to link back to experts in the office to give rapid response to care issues. The strategy was that the staff in the field would link back to the office to direct them or contact resources to deliver the right care seamlessly with a simple to use mobile application that would work in and out of cellular coverage areas.

Beverley John, CEO/Executive Director, Nucleus Independent Living sat down for a post implementation interview to share her thoughts. "While technologies provide many benefits they can be disruptive in their implementation. Working with the CellTrak team we were able to get up and running with an easy to use solution for the entire Seniors Division care staff. It was important to us to leverage the current investment we have made in technologies that we use and add on new capabilities that would provide actionable data and improved workflow for our care team".

Home and community care is at the forefront of improving the access to healthcare across the care continuum and continues to be a major focus area for growth in staff and focus across healthcare. Homecare services include both medical and skilled nursing services and personal care services; including bathing, condition management, wellness, nutrition, and transportation services. Home health care can also include other services such as medical equipment and supplies, physical therapy and psychological services. The new CellTrak solution provided many benefits for Nucleus including but not limited to the following;

Nucleus was keen to use the new Alert Driven Management capabilities of CellTrak. This new feature includes the ability to set operational, clinical and systems alerts that improve quality and risk management for clients and staff. Alert driven workflow improves the agency efficiency in care delivery and preventing errors. Agency offices are sent targeted, actionable alerts via email and text to get real time insight into the performance of any visit. If an agency is dealing with underperformance issues or workforce scheduling challenges, alerts are sent to operations as to why this is happening, finance gets alerts on travel time and mileage optimization while systems receives alerts on device usage, data and security.

"Nucleus Independent Living was our initial project with Goldcare as the EMR system. With the integrated solution the new capabilities enable further enhancements in care delivery and quality that the team at Nucleus implemented very efficiently," shared Michael K. Wons, President and CEO of CellTrak Technologies, Inc.

CellTrak offers a family of mobile solutions built on the needs and input from the healthcare continuum. With solutions that start with an easy to use mobile device to empower your workforce to dynamically manage care delivery, care planning/coordination, and care team collaboration. CellTrak includes portal applications that provide real-time visibility and action for your entire care team.

Importantly, CellTrak enables any size agency a custom fit solution to allow more time spent on care and less on paperwork and redundant work. Together, CellTrak and leading Homecare providers across the globe partner to provide safety and better care for those in need.